To Begin
by graffy
Summary: Much like the way you’ve just fallen to the floor, you’ve fallen for your stepsister: unexpected, unbalanced, and a little bit painful. You pick yourself up, and leave without a word. Rated T for language and implied violence.


**Title: To Begin  
Rating: strong T for violence and language  
Fandom: Life With Derek  
Pairing: Derek/Casey  
**

* * *

This is how it begins:

You're busy making out with your latest date (read: conquest) on your living room couch, and you don't give a shit at all about what her name is. It's something that begins with a vowel…or a consonant. Something. All that matters is that she's kissing you vehemently, and it's easy to imagine that it's your keener step-sister who's straddling you.

It's sick, you know. You can't tell anybody, even Sammy-Boy or Ralph, because you know that they'd just think you'd gone mental or something. Plus, how are you supposed to break the news to your friends that, oh, yeah, you've been lusting after Casey since about seven months after she moved in, when you accidentally walked in on her in the shower.

She hadn't noticed when you did, of course, because you're still alive. Her eyes had been shut while she shampooed her hair and she was singing to herself, but you stood, frozen, just long enough to have a vivid image of her body in your mind's eye.

The same body that tonight, you last saw dressed in a hot as hell light blue summer dress that swished around her knees and hugged her chest in the sexiest way. She was going on a date with the captain of the Johnson hockey team. You've only met the guy the two times you've kicked his ass on the ice and he seemed okay, but he's on your shit list now because he gets to see her in that dress.

You kiss the girl on top of you a little bit harder, winding your hand in her hair in a way that probably hurts her scalp. She moans, though, so you imagine she doesn't care.

She _does_ care, however, when your phone vibrates in your pocket and Yell Fire! by Michael Franti scares the shit out of you both because it's blaring so loudly. You shove her away from you a little and rummage around for your phone. Your heart jumps a little when you see it's Casey calling, and you feign irritation. You flip the phone open. "What."

There's a sniffle on the other line, and a hitching breath. "Derek?"

Her voice is small and distant, and you immediately sit up straight. "Casey? What's wrong?"

"I…" She breaks off, more gasps interrupting her speech. She moans a little, and you can hear her as she starts crying in earnest. "Brent, he…I can't…Derek…can you come get me?"

You don't understand what she was trying to tell you, and you don't really want to imagine it, but the next thing you know your pants are zipped and buttoned again, and you've shrugged your leather jacket on. The girl on your couch is pouting, arms crossed over her chest. "D," she whines, stumbling off of the furniture. "Where are you going?"

You pause at the door, and turn back to look at her with a cocked eyebrow. "I think you know the way to your car," you say, snidely, and leave your own house before she can.

She'll come up to you on Monday and slap you across the face for ditching her so abruptly, but for right now, you don't care about anything but getting in your car and calling Casey to find out where she is.

000

This is where you find her:

She's huddled on the corner of some random street, head buried in her arms and cell phone clutched firmly in one of her hands. She's shaking, from the cold or from tears, you don't know. You pull up next to her, but she doesn't look up. It isn't until you sit down next to her on the cold concrete that she even moves, and when she does, she's crawling into your lap and sobbing against your neck. You can feel her hot breath against your skin and your collar is getting soaked from her tears, but all you want to do is hold her close to you and make it all stop.

You sit with her for ten minutes, at least, rocking her gently on your lap. When her sniffles calm, you lift her in your arms and stand, walking over to the car and somehow managing to open the passenger door, even with two armfuls of Casey. You set your broken step-sister into her seat, shut the door, and move to the driver's side.

It isn't until you've climbed in and shut the door, that you notice the bruises on her neck and face, sickly illuminated by the street light. "Fuck," you swear quietly, flicking on the interior car lights. She winces and tries to turn her head, but you grasp her chin gently in your fingers and turn her towards you.

Her bottom lip is split and dried blood stains her mouth and chin, she has a bruise on her left cheek and more around her neck. You almost throw up when you realize that she has a ring of handprints around her throat, and she's holding up one of the straps from her light blue dress with her hand, because the string's been ripped clean off the fabric. She had a sweater with her when she'd left the house, and she doesn't have it anymore. You don't want to think about what happened to it.

"What," you begin, but your voice is too hoarse to continue the sentence and not sound like an idiot, so you clear your throat. "Case, what the hell happened?"

She doesn't say anything for a while, so you turn off the lights and start the car, and begin the drive home. It's only when you've pulled up in front of your house that she starts talking. You take the key out of the ignition and listen, silent.

"He took me out on a picnic," she says quietly, staring out the windshield. "You know…sunset, sandwiches, drinks, dessert, the works. He was sweet about it all, so I figured he was a good guy. But…then we got back to his car and…he kissed me." If she notices the way that your hands clench around the steering wheel, she doesn't say anything. "And I let him, because he'd been so nice. But he started getting more aggressive and I asked him to stop. And he didn't…so I slapped him and tried to get out of the car." Her small hand circles her neck carefully, tracing the dark bruises there. "He…didn't like that."

She stares at you with empty blue eyes, and gives a weak smile, hand falling from her throat. "I'm sorry I interrupted your date," she whispers, and climbs out of the car.

000

This is how it happens:

You've both been home for about an hour, and she's been sitting or sleeping quietly in her room, you don't know which, because you've been too busy pacing in yours. You know you can be an asshole to her (hell, it's practically your JOB), but when she apologized for making you save her from what could have been date-rape, you felt your stomach drop and your heart break. You hate that feeling.

Which explains why you go bursting into her room suddenly, scaring her enough that she falls off her bed with a thump. You don't bother to help her up. You might care about her but it still amuses you to watch her revert back to her Klutzilla ways.

When she's managed to right herself long enough to give you a bewildered stare, you growl out, "I want to kill him." You turn around and kick her bedroom door shut, before stalking towards her. She reclines on her bed as you put your arms on either side of her, palms flat against her bedspread. "I want to fucking kill him," you seethe. Your line of sight gives you the perfect (worst) view of all her bruises.

It's when she starts telling you that there's nothing you could have done to stop this from happening, you suddenly catapult backwards, waving your arms as you lose your balance and topple to the ground.

Much like the way you've just fallen to the floor, you've fallen for your stepsister: unexpected, unbalanced, and a little bit painful.

You pick yourself up, and leave without a word.

000

This is how it ends:

She's just come back from a jog, and you're sitting on her bed, elbows on your knees and bouncing nervously. She opens the door, not looking at you but looking at her iPod as she wraps her headphones around it, and when she finally does notice you lurking, she jumps. You can't help but smirk at her, because even though you're in love with your stepsister doesn't mean pissing her off isn't funny anymore. She scowls and places a hand over her heart. "Jesus, Derek, you scared me half to death."

"Guess I'll have to try twice as hard next time," you remark dryly. She rolls her eyes and places her iPod on the desk, and turns to face you. It's only then that you notice she is wearing the following: black spandex shorts, tennis shoes and socks, and a purple sports bra. Your eyebrows shoot up as you give her an extremely obvious once over, and you know she's uncomfortable from the way her arms wrap around her waist.

She bites her lip, then licks it, and opens her mouth to say something. What, you don't know, because that was the exact moment you lost your control. You strand up from your place on the bed and cross over to her. She backs away until she hits the door, and looks up at you with large blue eyes. One of your fingers trails over her neck (and when did you lift your hand anyways?) , scooting along the back before you plunge your hand into her gorgeous (albeit a bit sweaty) brown hair. You lower your mouth to hers, and you worry only for a split second about her reaction.

Only a split second because after that amount of time, she's got her arms thrown around your neck and her legs around your waist, and it's almost as if she's been waiting as long as you have for this moment.

The two of you stumble towards her bed and topple onto her covers, kissing all the while. She's licking your neck and kissing your chin and your eyes roll back into your head.

And you smile when you realize…it's only the beginning.


End file.
